The Meeting of Midday and Sunset
by Summer Leigh Wind
Summary: "I'm old enough to be your grandfather," he said. "I was even your parents' professor before you… Aurora this isn't-" She cut him off with a swift kiss. When Aurora pulled back, she looked at him with a coy smile and whispered, "It's been a long time since you've been a professor to me, Horace." Two-Shot.
1. Part I

_**The Meeting of Midday and Sunset**_

* * *

"I'm old enough to be your grandfather," he said. "I was even your parents' professor before you. Aurora this isn't–"

She cut him off with a swift kiss. When Aurora pulled back, she looked at him with a coy smile and whispered, "It's been a long time since you've been a professor to me, Horace."

Hesitantly, Horace placed his hand on her thigh. He was still uncertain that the course they were about to take was appropriate. She was a _colleague_. What if things ended poorly? What then? Their working relationship might never recover. Then there was the fact she'd once been a pupil under his tutelage.

Aurora may have not been his student for over twenty years, but he could still recall the girl she'd been. A tall child with sleepy eyes, dancing fingers, and feet that refused to stop pounding out their steady rhythms upon floors and tabletops even for exams. Oh, she'd been irksome then. Always offering simpering apologies for the annoyances she caused professors and peers alike while defiantly continuing her practices. She had made a wonderful, wonderful Slytherin, Horace would admit, but Aurora had also been so _frustrating_ to teach. One never knew if she heard them over her private songs or if she was too tired to be paying due attention when she stared unblinkingly forward with half-lidded eyes.

Now, with age and reflection, Horace could surmise that her tired eyes and perpetually in-motion appendages had come from late nights spent studying the stars. Her drowsy gaze a result of forfeited sleep and her moving hands and feet a necessary evil to stave off slumber during inappropriate times.

When Horace learned she'd taken up teaching Astronomy to the children of Hogwarts, Aurora was an enigma no more. Finally, everything came together to reveal her for what she'd always been – a stargazer. Aurora, once an alien girl, was now a relatable woman. With this new information, it made sense to Horace that Aurora built her career around trying to bridge the gap between the sublunary children of Hogwarts and those foreign ones of the nighttime sky.

Horace may have not given her much mind as a girl, seeing as Aurora did not have any prodigious talents, connections, or even the cut-throat ambition so many of her peers did, but now? _All_ his attention was going to her. Aurora was not that sleepy girl anymore. She was a _woman_. She was not quite middle-aged yet, but neither was she someone you could mistake for anything under thirty. Aurora had the beginning of marionette lines around her mouth and her constant odd hours and lack of sleep had left permanent bags beneath her dark gaze. Horace could see that now with her in his lap.

She was still fifty years younger than Horace, but Aurora was more than mature enough to understand what a relationship like this would come with. She knew just as well as he that they would draw frowns, whispers, and quizzically raised eyebrows. Even with all of the same knowledge as Horace, though, Aurora, with her orphic eyes and winsome smiles, had been trying to lure Horace into her world for _months_ , he realized with awe. All those looks, brief touches and murmurs of concern and flattery he'd received from Aurora over the year had been her attempt to tell him that she wanted to be more than friends and colleagues.

Now, with the end of the school year fast approaching, Horace could see that she'd decided to take a more direct approach by inviting Horace to her rooms to discuss a popular novel over wine when her more subtle attempts failed to give her the results she wanted. They had talked about the novel, of course, because Horace had long since given up on romance and had never thought there could be more to Aurora's invitation than what was on the surface. When Aurora had realized such after an hour or so of talking with Horace, she made the grand gesture of putting aside her goblet and losing the friendly quirk of her lips.

Raising a brow in question, Horace had waited.

Aurora told him, "I'm quite fond of you, Horace."

He had been miffed at her directness, yet thoroughly pleased at knowing Aurora liked him. "Thank you, Aurora," Horace had said with a small, confused smile.

She frowned thoughtfully. Then her eyes sparked with what he understood now had been an idea. Lips forming into the faintest outline of a victory smile, she placed a hand on his knee. Horace stared at it. Then, lifting his eyes, he stared at Aurora.

It clicked.

Her unflinching gaze told him all he needed to know.

"Aurora…"

She got up from her chair and carefully sat herself on his old knees. "I want to be with you," she told him.

And then he'd tried to protest. She had kissed him and now, uncertain, he had to consider what he was going to do. This was a quandary that never before had Horace faced. Even when he had been a _young_ professor, students and colleagues alike hadn't shown much interest in him. Horace was quite short; and while his potbelly was a newer addition, he knew he'd always been a bit pudgy.

Horace was willing to concede he was not handsome, not even when he'd been a young man. It never bothered him much, though. Some women didn't need an attractive fellow, just one who could provide for them (or so he'd been told by his mother, grandmother and aunts). As time went on, though, being a professor took up more and more of his time as he began to form his social club and became the Head of Slytherin.

After a while, he stopped looking for a wife.

Horace had friends a plenty and a fulfilling career. Even now, Horace acknowledged a wife would be a nice addition, but he was alright without. Despite being content with his bachelorship though, and knowing what Aurora was offering was not necessarily lifetime devotion, Horace could not stop himself from imagining her as his wife. Aurora, as his wife, waiting at home for him every evening with a warm smile and kiss. Aurora strolling hand and hand with him through Hogsmeade. Aurora casting cooling charms upon him when he was feverish and ill. Aurora being there to share new discoveries with and to shower with extravagant gifts.

Aurora beside him always.

It was such a beautiful dream that Horace worried if he turned down Aurora's advances now he'd never get the chance to realize it. With that fear in mind as he continued to map out the intricacies of their potential future as husband and wife, Horace made his decision. Beginning to move his hand up and down Aurora's thigh, he murmured, "Okay."

Long arms wrapping around his neck, Horace could feel her sigh in relief. "Oh, Horace, we'll be so happy…" she told him before kissing the shell of his ear.

Finding himself smiling, Horace took Aurora in a gentle hold around the waist and said, "I have no doubt, my love."

Briefly, Aurora returned his smile. Then she canted forward, eyes fluttering closed. His smile going wide for all of a moment, Horace let his own eyes fall closed as he captured his lover's lips in an all-encompassing kiss.

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 **Thoughts?**

 **I enjoyed writing it, though, I feel like I might need to write a followup chapter or two eventually.**

 **Thanks for reading and please review!**


	2. Part II

_**The Meeting of Midday and Sunset**_

* * *

The fire casting a warm glow upon them, Aurora sighed in contentment. She brought her toes up from the room's stone floor to be warmed beneath the folds of the throw that lay across her and Horace's lap on the sofa. Absently, he moved his hand up and down her arm as he turned a page in his potions journal.

Smiling to herself as she sipped at her now tepid tea, Aurora thought about how much she enjoyed evenings like this. In previous relationships, quality time like this had always been so rare and far between. When she'd been young, a student at Hogwarts, her short-lived relationship with Regulus Black had involved them sneaking out of their dorm most nights to find corners of Hogwarts to hide in and snog in privacy. After Hogwarts and Regulus, she'd dated several men. With them, there had been parties and dances and long nights at pubs and walking hand and hand down moonlit streets with friends.

Aurora had enjoyed all those moments, (how could she not?) they had been exhilarating relationships at the time. All of that talking, touching, kissing, sex, and intense moments of just _staring_ at one another that went on had been downright exhilarating. However, when Aurora's career began at Hogwarts, just shy of her twenty-eighth birthday, everything changed.

She blamed it on the students. Especially the first years who sniffled and wandered around with lost expressions during the first few days of every new school year; they had _stirred_ something in her. When speaking to her mother about it once, the old woman had laughed and said to Aurora, " _They've brought out your maternal instincts!_ "

It'd disgusted her. Before becoming a professor, Aurora's life had revolved around mapping out her beloved stars and planets in the sky and passionate nights spent beneath them with the most handsome and clever of men. She didn't _want_ those motherly compulsions that the round-faced eleven-year-olds evoked and she _hated_ how with those instincts, her want for fervent love seemed to die.

No longer had dates and nights under the stars enticed her as they once did. Instead, all she could think about when she went out with a man was what their child might look like. What kind of father would he be? The kind that let his child jump head first into the ocean? Or was he the kind of father who held their son or daughter's hand as they lay in bed sick and feverish?

The men she saw and were attracted to never thought about children and always ran away when she broached the subject. After a while, Aurora had decided to just stop dating altogether. She didn't know how to pick men to meet her new tastes and until she could, she ought to bow out of the game. However, loneliness began to creep into her heart as the nights alone dragged on and on. Her students and friends and family couldn't fill the hole that'd formed with her end to dating and it _frustrated_ Aurora endlessly.

She couldn't stand the way her heart ached from the loss of romance.

It took time, but Aurora was a clever woman and while attempting to find a way to repair her bleeding heart, she began to notice her colleague: Severus Snape.

Aurora had gone to school with him. He'd been a rather sullen boy then, never seeming to be happy with anyone or anything. Though… One could never miss the way his disgruntled disposition lessened in the company of that famed Lily Potter née Evans and potions. Aurora had wondered if she couldn't become his _new_ Lily Potter and give him some peace he appeared to be sorely lacking.

She'd batted her lashes at him for days, drew him into conversations alone about anything she could think to talk about and a few times, actually dared to _touch_ his arms and hands with tender intimacy. When he didn't reject her, Aurora had begun to fill with hope that they could be something and that their could be room for love and marriage and children and _togetherness_.

But all of that hope was dashed after she suggested a trip to Hogsmeade together.

"How about we go to the Broomsticks and ah, chaperone the children during the next Hogsmeade trip?" she'd asked in that soft voice of hers that used to make her lovers smile and lean in for more.

Severus had looked away. "I can't," he said. "I have potions that need to be brewed for Pomfrey."

"Oh," she'd whispered, "perhaps we could next time, then?"

He shook his head and took a step away from her. "No, Aurora. I'm not interested."

Fighting back the raw disappointment that wanted to overwhelm her, Aurora had given Severus her most toothsome grin and told him, "That's all right. I understand."

He'd looked at her then, dark eyes uneasy and a tad regretful. "My declining of your offer has nothing to do with anything you may have done or said. I have enjoyed your recent company, but I just can't allow things to go farther than they have so far. It would be unfair to both of us."

Severus's rejection would smart for days, weeks, _months_ to come, but after the war, with Harry Potter's revelations of her colleague's role in the war, Aurora would come to think she understand his refusal. He'd likely had his suspicions all along that he would meet his end before the war was over and understood there were too many dangers and secrets that would be floating between them for their relationship to be a happy one.

In some ways, Aurora was thankful that he'd done what he had, because otherwise, she wouldn't have Horace. Horace, who, from the moment he came back to teach, followed her around a room with his eyes. The way he blustered and laughed as he had when she was young, delighted Aurora. She'd never been a favorite of his, but that had been part of the excitement of trying to court him. Aurora had to _make_ him like her. She had always adored a challenge and Horace proved to be quite a difficult one. Despite how he looked at her when he thought she wasn't paying attention, Horace never seemed to realize all her smiles and touches and laughter were anything more than just friendly.

It had taken inviting him to her rooms and going so far as to lay a hand upon his knee in an intimate fashion before he understood. Horace had even looked like he might reject Aurora (just as Severus had) for a time. But seeing as he'd grown just as fond of her as she had of him, he relented to her advances. From that night on, their bond had only grown steadier and deeper. Horace had shown her the pleasures of quiet nights interspersed with intimate Slugclub dinners and more rambunctious parties. He'd shown Aurora variety and addicted her to the joys of large gatherings, the noise, the laughter, the faces and energy.

If not for him, Aurora knew she would not have half as many students as she now did in her classes. The relationships she'd forged with them through her Horace's parties and dinners had tied students to her in ways she'd never been quite able to before. It made them more willing to ask questions and pose theories and say things they never did before.

It made sharing the language of the sky so much easier. Aurora was even starting to believe some of her more avid students saw the same stories and masterpieces among the stars that she did. Knowing this made her career so much more rewarding;and in turn, her life was far more fulfilling than it ever had been before. All in thanks to her wonderful Horace.

Heart swelled with love, Aurora craned her neck to place a kiss upon Horace's jaw. Aurora then let one hand fall away from her mug and brush down her protruding stomach. Soon, she would have a child that was part of the wonderful man beside her. Soon, Aurora would have everything she had desired since she became a professor of Hogwarts.

In nearly no time at all, her life would reach the peak of perfection.

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 **And this would be Aurora's side of her and Horace Slughorn's relationship. How do you feel about it? Does it answer questions you had? Do you like the story still? Or would you rather have had Aurora's side of the relationship left a mystery?**

 **Also, since I believe this will be the end of the story, thank you to, Dragon MoonX, ChatterChick, Anastasia The Goddess of Drama, Lokilette, Lamia of the Dark, ilovedamncookies, and GrossGirl18 for your reviews :)**

 **Thank you for reading and please review!**


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